1. Field of the Invention
The invention is in the field of modular parallel computer architecture and in particular a modular embodiment of the System Controller of a transition machine.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Transition machines are general purpose computers with extensive multiprocessing capabilities. The basic architectural philosophy and design of such machines is described in copending application Ser. No. 38,292, filed May 11, 1979 and entitled "Transition Machine--A General Purpose Computer", assigned to the same assignee as herein, now U.S. Pat. No. 4,319,321. A related invention for providing increased data security utilizing a transition machine is described in copending application Ser. No. 091,877, filed Nov. 7, 1979 and entitled "Secure Implementation of Transition Machine Computer", now U.S. Pat. No. 4,328,542. The whole of both of these aforementioned applications is incorporated herein by reference.
The System Controller is a hardware device which performs the basic control function for the transition machine. The System Controller contains all data constructs and logic required to control the multiprocessing system. In the embodiments described in the aforementioned applications, multiprocessor access contention over the System Controller results in reducing some of the overall system throughput since usable processor time is wasted in waiting for access contention to be resolved. The larger the number of data processors, the more significant are the access contention problems. Furthermore, the size and dimensions of the System Controller's data constructs for a given system are not easily determined prior to the software development and vary considerably from system to system. In addition, these capacities must be increased commensurably with modular increases in processing capacity. A fixed size data construct memory within the System Controller provides considerable constraints to the programmer and inhibits software development and maintenance. These disadvantages of the transition machines have been overcome by the utilization of a multiple disjoint System Controllers and/or a modularly expanded implementation of the System Controller as described hereinbelow.